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Dessert

Genoese Pastry

A sweet pastry made with eggs, sugar, flour, butter, chocolate, jam, and iced with chocolate icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Genoese Pastry

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs and sugar over a hot water bath for about 20 minutes until it rises and looks white.

  2. Pour in the melted butter and stir in the flour gently.

  3. Prepare a baking tin lined with well-buttered paper and pour in the mixture.

Bake and fill

  1. Do not open the oven door for 10 minutes while baking at 400°F (200°C).

  2. Turn the pastry onto sugared paper, spread half with jam, and place the other half on top.

  3. Cut into shapes.

Ice and finish

  1. For chocolate icing, melt the chocolate in water, add icing sugar, and stir continuously without boiling.

  2. Pour the hot icing over the pastry and spread smoothly.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + chocolatetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,543 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whipped with sugar to trap air, giving the pastry its light, rising structure.
Flour
Provides the set structure that holds the sponge once it is baked.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender crumb to the finished pastry.
Sugar
Sweetens the sponge and helps stabilise the whipped egg foam.
Grated chocolate
Flavours the icing and gives it a glossy, set texture when melted.

The step that matters

Beat the eggs and sugar over a hot water bath. The eggs must be whipped until thick and pale so they hold air; under-whipping leaves a dense sponge that will not rise well in the oven.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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